Debating teams from Trinity College Dublin and Harvard
University recently took part in the Student Economic Review (SER) debate
chaired by Dr Patrick Prendergast, Provost of Trinity College Dublin.

Debating the motion, that “this house believes the US
education system has failed its citizens”, the Trinity team narrowly defeated
their Harvard rivals in the overall debate. Harvard’s Fanele Mashwama won the
Best Speaker Gold Medal.

The debate, which was hosted by the Philosophical
Society, featured a distinguished panel of judges which included Laurence
D’Arcy, Director of Crimson Tide Plc; Michael Keating, Deputy CEO of Bord
Iascaigh Mhara; Professor Frances Ruane, Director of the Economic and Social
Research Institute (ESRI); and Vinay Nair, Head of International Business
Development at Acumen and former SER debates manager.

During the debate the Trinity side, which consisted of Ruth
Keating, a senior sophister law student, William Dunne, a Junior sophister PPES
student, and Sarah Mortell, a senior freshman
BESS student, argued that the American system fails its citizens fundamentally
by failing to address and even by exacerbating entrenched social inequalities
and is found lacking on the high rhetorical standard that America sets for
itself.

A formidable outfit from Harvard University in Dylan
Hardenbergh, a sophomore linguistics and neurobiology student, Nathaniel Donahue
a junior economic history student, and Fanele Mashwama a freshman philosophy
student maintained however that the American education system, in virtue of its
decentralisation, can boast a dynamism and innovative character that other
systems lack. The system, they argued, succeeds in equipping its students with
the entrepreneurial and critical thinking skills that they will need to get
ahead in the real world.

The work of the SER, now in its 28th year, is presided over
by Professor of Economics and President of the SER, John O’Hagan. Each year the
SER organise two debates in conjunction with the college's Philosophical or
Historical Society, played always to a packed GMB debating chamber. The first,
run in the Michaelmas Term sees a Trinity team compete against either Oxford or
Cambridge Universities, while the second, held in Hilary Term, alternates
between Harvard and Yale Universities. The debates, along with the Student
Economic Review, an undergraduate journal published annually by the students,
are supported by four donors, all former Trinity graduates.

Find out more on the recently
revamped SER website www.tcd.ie/Economics/SER/index.php
which includes details regarding sponsors, reflections from past SER Committee
Members and copies of previous SER publications from over the last 27 years.